Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria

by Zénaïde A. Ragozin

FOOTNOTES:

[C] "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon."

[D] Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," Vol. I., Chap. II.

[E] See Figure [15], on p. 53.

[F] See Figures [5], [6], and [7].

III.

THE RUINS.

"And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime for mortar."—Gen. xi. 3.

1. It is a principle, long ago laid down and universally recognized, that every country makes its own people. That is, the mode of life and the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the characteristic features of the land in which it dwells; or, in other words, men can live only in a manner suited to the peculiarities of their native country. Men settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life, will develop different qualities of mind and body from the owners of vast inland pasture-grounds or the holders of rugged mountain fastnesses. They will all dress differently, eat different food, follow different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public buildings will present an entirely different aspect, according to the material which they will have at hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood or any other substance suitable for the purpose. Thus every country will create its own peculiar style of art, determined chiefly by its own natural productions. On these, architecture, the art of the builder, will be even more dependent than any other.

2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all, for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually, through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the finest of all for cultivation, and a greater source of wealth than mines of the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and contains no stone. The people who were first tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the Persian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that region, found nothing at all available to construct their simple dwellings—nothing but reeds of enormous size, which grew there, as they do now, in the greatest profusion. These reeds "cover the marshes in the summer-time, rising often to the height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of the marsh region form their houses of this material, binding the stems together and bending them into arches, to make the skeletons of their buildings; while, to form the walls, they stretch across from arch to arch mats made of the leaves."[G]

3. There can be no doubt that of such habitations consisted the villages and towns of those first settlers. They gave quite sufficient shelter in the very mild winters of that region, and, when coated with a layer of mud which soon dried and hardened in the sun, could exclude even the violent rains of that season. But they were in no way fitted for more ambitious and dignified purposes. Neither the palaces of the kings nor the temples of the gods could be constructed out of bent reeds. Something more durable must be found, some material that would lend itself to constructions of any size or shape. The mud coating of the cabins naturally suggested such a material. Could not this same mud or clay, of which an inexhaustible supply was always on hand, be moulded into cakes of even size, and after being left to dry in the sun, be piled into walls of the required height and thickness? And so men began to make bricks. It was found that the clay gained much in consistency when mixed with finely chopped straw—another article of which the country, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could not withstand the continued action of many rainy seasons, or many torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry, or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain. All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and solidity of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is naturally very much greater than that of the original crude article, so the latter continued to be used in far greater quantities; the walls were made entirely of them and only protected by an outward casing of the hard baked bricks. These being so much more expensive, and calculated to last forever, great care was bestowed on their preparation; the best clay was selected and they were stamped with the names and titles of the king by whose order the palace or temple was built, for which they were to be used. This has been of great service in identifying the various ruins and assigning them dates, at least approximately. As is to be expected, there is a notable difference in the specimens of different periods. While on some bricks bearing the name of a king who lived about 3000 b.c. the inscription is uncouth and scarcely legible, and even their shape is rude and the material very inferior, those of the later Babylonian period (600 b.c.) are handsome and neatly made. As to the quality, all explorers agree in saying it is fully equal to that of the best modern English bricks. The excellence of these bricks for building purposes is a fact so well known that for now two thousand years—ever since the destruction of Babylon—its walls, temples and palaces have been used as quarries for the construction of cities and villages. The little town of Hillah, situated nearest to the site of the ancient capital, is built almost entirely with bricks from one single mound, that of Kasr—once the gorgeous and far-famed palace of Nebuchadnezzar, whose name and titles thus grace the walls of the most lowly Arab and Turkish dwellings. All the other mounds are similarly used, and so far is the valuable mine from being exhausted, that it furnishes forth, to this day, a brisk and flourishing trade. While a party of workmen is continually employed in digging for the available bricks, another is busy conveying them to Hillah; there they are shipped on the Euphrates and carried to any place where building materials are in demand, often even loaded on donkeys at this or that landing-place and sent miles away inland; some are taken as far as Baghdad, where they have been used for ages. The same thing is done wherever there are mounds and ruins. Both Layard and his successors had to allow their Arab workmen to build their own temporary houses out of ancient bricks, only watching them narrowly, lest they should break some valuable relic in the process or use some of the handsomest and best-preserved specimens.

4. No construction of bricks, either crude or kiln-dried, could have sufficient solidity without the help of some kind of cement, to make them adhere firmly together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea and Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of various qualities. While in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period, which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks, that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought down by water from Is on the Euphrates (now called Hit), where abundant springs of bitumen are to this day in activity. Calcareous earth—i.e., earth strongly mixed with lime—being very plentiful to the west of the lower Euphrates, towards the Arabian frontier, the Babylonians of the latest times learned to make of it a white mortar which, for lightness and strength, has never been surpassed.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

5. All the essential materials for plain but durable constructions being thus procurable on the spot or in the immediate neighborhood, the next important point was the selection of proper sites for raising these constructions, which were to serve purposes of defence as well as of worship and royal majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there, more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps, and from the intolerable nuisance of swarms of aggressive and venomous insects, which infest the entire river region during the long summer season. Safety from the attacks of the numerous roaming tribes which ranged the country in every direction before it was definitely settled and organized, was also not among the last considerations. So, what nature had refused, the cunning and labor of man had to supply. Artificial hills or platforms were constructed, of enormous size and great height—from thirty to fifty, even sixty feet, and on their flat summits the buildings were raised. These platforms sometimes supported only one palace, sometimes, as in the case of the immense mounds of Koyunjik and Nimrud in Assyria, their surface had room for several, built by successive kings. Of course such huge piles could not be entirely executed in solid masonry, even of crude bricks. These were generally mixed with earth and rubbish of all kinds, in more or less regular, alternate layers, the bricks being laid in clay. But the outward facing was in all cases of baked brick. The platform of the principal mound which marks the place of ancient Ur, (now called Mugheir),[H] is faced with a wall ten feet thick, of red kiln-dried bricks, cemented with bitumen. In Assyria, where stone was not scarce, the sides of the platform were even more frequently "protected by massive stone-masonry, carried perpendicularly from the natural ground to a height somewhat exceeding that of the platform, and either made plain at the top, or else crowned into stone battlements cut into gradines."[I]

10.—MOUND OF NIMRUD.

(Hommel.)

6. Some mounds are considerably higher than the others and of a peculiar shape, almost like a pyramid, that is, ending in a point from which it slopes down rapidly on all sides. Such is the pyramidal mound of Nimrud, which Layard describes as being so striking and picturesque an object as you approach the ruins from any point of the plain.[J] Such also is the still more picturesque mound of Borsip (now Birs Nimrud) near Babylon, the largest of this kind.[K] These mounds are the remains of peculiar constructions, called Ziggurats, composed of several platforms piled one on the other, each square in shape and somewhat smaller than the preceding one; the topmost platform supported a temple or sanctuary, which by these means was raised far above the dwellings of men, a constant reminder not less eloquent than the exhortation in some of our religious services: "Lift up your hearts!" Of these heavenward pointing towers, which were also used as observatories by the Chaldeans, great lovers of the starry heavens, that of Borsip, once composed of seven stages, is the loftiest; it measures over 150 feet in perpendicular height.

11.—MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR).

7. It is evident that these artificial hills could have been erected only at an incredible cost of labor. The careful measurements which have been taken of several of the principal mounds have enabled explorers to make an accurate calculation of the exact amount of labor employed on each. The result is startling, even though one is prepared for something enormous. The great mound of Koyunjik—which represents the palaces of Nineveh itself—covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches an elevation of 95 feet at its highest point. To heap up such a pile of brick and earth "would require the united exertions of 10,000 men for twelve years, or of 20,000 men for six years."[L] Then only could the construction of the palaces begin. The mound of Nebbi-Yunus, which has not yet been excavated, covers an area of forty acres and is loftier and steeper than its neighbor: "its erection would have given full employment to 10,000 men for the space of five years and a half." Clearly, none but conquering monarchs, who yearly took thousands of prisoners in battles and drove home into captivity a part of the population of every country they subdued, could have employed such hosts of workmen on their buildings—not once, but continually, for it seems to have been a point of honor with the Assyrian kings that each should build a new palace for himself.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

8. When one considers the character of the land along the upper course of the Tigris, where the Assyrians dwelt, one cannot help wondering why they went on building mounds and using nothing but bricks in their constructions. There is no reason for it in the nature of the country. The cities of Assyria—Nineveh (Koyunjik), Kalah (Nimrud), Arbela, Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality, they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts all Assyria to the East, separating it from Media. Yet they never availed themselves of these resources, which must have led to great improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius. They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from it and went off to found cities for themselves, they took with them certain arts and tricks of handicraft learned in the old home, and never thought of making any change in them. It does not even seem to have occurred to them that by selecting a natural rocky elevation for their buildings they would avoid the necessity of an artificial platform and save vast amount of labor and time.

13.—RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.)

(Kaulen.)

14.—RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (MODERN.)

(Kaulen.)

9. That they did put stone to one practical use—the outward casing of their walls and platforms—we have already seen. The blocks must have been cut in the Zagros mountains and brought by water—rafted down the Zab, or some other of the rivers which, springing from those mountains, flow into the Tigris. The process is represented with perfect clearness on some of the sculptures. That reproduced in Fig. [13] is of great interest, as showing a peculiar mode of transport,—rafts floated on inflated skins—which is at the present moment in as general and constant use as it appears to have been in the same parts three thousand years ago and probably more. When Layard wished to send off the bulls and lions which he had moved from Nimrud and Koyunjik down the Tigris to Baghdad and Busrah, (or Bassorah), there to be embarked for Europe, he had recourse to this conveyance, as no other is known for similar purposes. This is how he describes the primitive, but ingenious contrivance: "The skins of full-grown sheep and goats, taken off with as few incisions as possible, are dried and prepared, one aperture being left, through which the air is forced by the lungs. A framework of poplar beams, branches of trees, and reeds, having been constructed of the size of the intended raft, the inflated skins are tied to it by osier twigs. The raft is then complete and is moved to the water and launched. Care is taken to place the skins with their mouths upward, that, in case any should burst or require refilling, they can be easily reached. Upon the framework are piled bales of goods, and property belonging to merchants and travellers.... The raftmen impel these rude vessels by long poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces of split cane. (See Fig. [14].) ... During the floods in spring, or after heavy rains, small rafts may float from Mosul to Baghdad in about eighty-four hours; but the larger are generally six or seven days in performing the voyage. In summer, and when the river is low, they are frequently nearly a month in reaching their destination. When they have been unloaded, they are broken up, and the beams, wood and twigs, sold at considerable profit. The skins are washed and afterward rubbed with a preparation, to keep them from cracking and rotting. They are then brought back, either on the shoulders of the raftmen or upon donkeys, to Mossul and Tekrit, where the men engaged in the navigation of the Tigris usually reside." Numerous sculptures show us that similar skins were also used by swimmers, who rode upon them in the water, probably when they intended to swim a greater distance than they could have accomplished by their unassisted efforts. (See Figure [16].)

15.—EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR).

10. Our imagination longs to reconstruct those gigantic piles as they must have struck the beholder in their towering hugeness, approached from the plain probably by several stairways and by at least one ascent of a slope gentle enough to offer a convenient access to horses and chariots. What an imposing object must have been, for instance, the palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. Unfortunately the work of reconstruction is left almost entirely to imagination, which derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into which time has converted those ancient, mighty halls.

16.—WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS.

(Babelon.)

11. Fergusson, an English explorer and scholar whose works on subjects connected with art and especially architecture hold a high place, has attempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such as he imagines it to have been, from the hints furnished by the excavations. He has produced a striking and most effective picture, of which, however, an entire half is simply guesswork. The whole nether part—the stone-cased, battlemented platform wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of the palace with its casing of sculptured slabs and portals guarded by winged bulls—is strictly according to the positive facts supplied by the excavations. For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do not even positively know whether there was any second story to Assyrian palaces at all. At all events, no traces of inside staircases have been found, and the upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor has regularly been either demolished or destroyed by fire. As to columns, it is impossible to ascertain how far they may have been used and in what way. Such as were used could have been, as a rule, only of wood—trunks of great trees hewn and smoothed—and consequently every vestige of them has disappeared, though some round column bases in stone have been found.[M] The same remarks apply to the restoration of an Assyrian palace court, also after Fergusson, while that of a palace hall, after Layard, is not open to the same reproach and gives simply the result of actual discoveries. Without, therefore, stopping long to consider conjectures more or less unsupported, let us rather try to reproduce in our minds a clear perception of what the audience hall of an Assyrian king looked like from what we may term positive knowledge. We shall find that our materials will go far towards creating for us a vivid and authentic picture.

17.—VIEW OF KOYUNJIK.

(Hommel.)

12. On entering such a hall the first thing to strike us would probably be the pavement, either of large alabaster slabs delicately carved in graceful patterns, as also the arched doorways leading into the adjacent rooms (see Figs. [24] and [25], pp. 69 and 71), or else covered with rows of inscriptions, the characters being deeply engraven and afterwards filled with a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, which would give the entire floor the appearance of being covered with inscriptions in gilt characters, the strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole look like an intricate and fanciful design.

18.—STONE LION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE. NIMRUD.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

13. Our gaze would next be fascinated by the colossal human-headed winged bulls and lions keeping their silent watch in pairs at each of the portals, and we should notice with astonishment that the artists had allowed them each an extra leg, making the entire number five instead of four. This was not done at random, but with a very well-calculated artistic object—that of giving the monster the right number of legs, whether the spectator beheld it in front or in profile, as in both cases one of the three front legs is concealed by the others. The front view shows the animal standing, while it appears to be striding when viewed from the side. (See Figures [18] and [27], pp. 59 and 75.) The walls were worthy of these majestic door-keepers. The crude brick masonry disappeared up to a height of twelve to fifteen feet from the ground under the sculptured slabs of soft grayish alabaster which were solidly applied to the wall, and held together by strong iron cramps. Sometimes one subject or one gigantic figure of king or deity was represented on one slab; often the same subject occupied several slabs, and not unfrequently was carried on along an entire wall. In this case the lines begun on one slab were continued on the next with such perfect smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to warrant the conclusion that the slabs were sculptured after they had been put in their places, not before. Traces of paint show that color was to a certain extent employed to enliven these representations, probably not over plentifully and with some discrimination. Thus color is found in many places on the eyes, brows, hair, sandals, the draperies, the mitre or high headdress of the kings, on the harness of horses and portions of the chariots, on the flowers carried by attendants, and sometimes on trees. Where a siege is portrayed, the flames which issue out of windows and roofs seem always to have been painted red. There is reason to believe, however, that color was but sparingly bestowed on the sculptures, and therefore they must have presented a pleasing contrast with the richness of the ornamentation which ran along the walls immediately above, and which consisted of hard baked bricks of large size, painted and glazed in the fire, forming a continuous frieze from three to five feet wide. Sometimes the painting represented human figures and various scenes, sometimes also winged figures of deities or fantastic animals,—in which case it was usually confined above and below by a simple but graceful running pattern; or it would consist wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pattern like Fig. [22], 23, or 25, these last symbolical compositions with a religious signification. (See also Fig. [21], "Interior view," etc.) Curiously enough the remains—mostly very trifling fragments—which have been discovered in various ruins, show that these handsomely finished glazed tiles exhibited the very same colors which are nowadays in such high favor with ourselves for all sorts of decorative purposes: those used most frequently were a dark and a pale yellow, white and cream-color, a delicate pale green, occasionally orange and a pale lilac, very little blue and red; olive-green and brown are favorite colors for grounds. "Now and then an intense blue and a bright red occur, generally together; but these positive hues are rare, and the taste of the Assyrians seems to have led them to prefer, for their patterned walls, pale and dull hues.... The general tone of their coloring is quiet, not to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly contrasted colors.[N]"

19.—COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

20.—CIRCULAR PILLAR-BASE.

14. It has been asked: how were those halls roofed and how were they lighted? questions which have given rise to much discussion and which can scarcely ever be answered in a positive way, since in no single instance has the upper part of the walls or any part whatever of the roofing been preserved. Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the principal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort of circumstantial evidence in the case. They are invariably long and narrow, the proportions in some being so striking as to have made them more like corridors than apartments—a feature, by the by, which must have greatly impaired their architectural beauty: they were three or four times as long as they were wide, and even more. The great hall of the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of the Nimrud mound (excavated by Layard, who calls it, from its position, "the North-West palace") is 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five halls in the Khorsabad palace the largest measures 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by 25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width of 40. It is scarcely probable that the old builders, who in other points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which there were several in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions are very much like those in our own castles and palaces,—nearly square, (about 180 ft. or 120 ft. each way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84, 124 ft. by 90, 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found to lean towards the long-and-narrow shape, one being 250 ft. by 150, and the other 220 by 100. But even this is very different from those passage-like galleries. The only thing which entirely explains this awkward feature of all the royal halls, is the difficulty of providing them with a roof. It is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to construct arches, they used them only for very narrow vaults or over gateways and doors, and could not have carried out the principle on any very extensive scale. The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that. There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter was settled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This also explains the great value which was attached by all the Assyrian conquerors to fine timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions were frequently undertaken into the distant mountainous regions of the Lebanon on purpose to cut some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally fall away in the smaller rooms, used probably as sleeping and dwelling apartments, and accordingly they vary freely from oblong to square; the latter being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes less, but never more. There were a great many such chambers in a palace; as many as sixty-eight have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik, and a large portion of the building, be it remembered, is not yet fully explored. Some were as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no ornaments at all and showed the crude brick. These differences probably indicate the difference of rank in the royal household of the persons to whom the apartments were assigned.

21.—INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

15. The question of light has been discussed by eminent explorers—Layard, Botta, Fergusson—at even greater length and with a greater display of ingenuity than that of roofing. The results of the learned discussion may be shortly summed up as follows: We may take it for granted that the halls were sufficiently lighted, for the builders would not have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had they not meant their work to be seen in all its details and to the best advantage. This could be effected only in one of three ways, or in two combined: either by means of numerous small windows pierced at regular intervals above the frieze of enamelled bricks, between that and the roof,—or by means of one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as proposed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller openings placed at more frequent intervals. This latter contrivance is in general use now in Armenian houses, and Botta, who calls it a louvre, gives a drawing of it.[O] It is very ingenious, and would have the advantage of not admitting too great a mass of sunlight and heat, and of being easily covered with carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The second method, though much the grandest in point of effect, would present none of these advantages and would be objectionable chiefly on account of the rain, which, pouring down in torrents—as it does, for weeks at a time, in those countries—must very soon damage the flooring where it is of brick, and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of the inconvenience of making the state apartments unfit for use for an indefinite period. The small side windows just below the roof would scarcely give sufficient light by themselves. Who knows but they may have been combined with the louvre system, and thus something very satisfactory finally obtained.

22.—COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.

23.—COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.

16. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria seem to have been absolutely possessed with a mania for building. Scarcely one of them but left inscriptions telling how he raised this or that palace, this or that temple in one or other city, often in many cities. Few contented themselves with repairing the buildings left by their predecessors. This is easy to be ascertained, for they always mention all they did in that line. Vanity, which seems to have been, together with the love of booty, almost their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a great measure. But there are also other causes, of which the principal one was the very perishable nature of the constructions, all their heavy massiveness notwithstanding. Being made of comparatively soft and yielding material, their very weight would cause the mounds to settle and bulge out at the sides in some places, producing crevices in others, and of course disturbing the balance of the thick but loose masonry of the walls constructed on top of them. These accidents could not be guarded against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, or even by the strong buttresses which were used from a very early period to prop up the unwieldy piles: the pressure from within was too great to be resisted.

24.—PAVEMENT SLAB.

17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and steadily destructive: the long, heavy winter rains. Crude brick, when exposed to moisture, easily dissolves into its original element—mud; even burned brick is not proof against very long exposure to violent wettings; and we know that the mounds were half composed of loose rubbish. Once thoroughly permeated with moisture, nothing could keep these huge masses from dissolution. The builders were well aware of the danger and struggled against it to the best of their ability by a very artfully contrived and admirably executed system of drainage, carried through the mounds in all directions and pouring the accumulated waters into the plain out of mouths beautifully constructed in the shape of arched vaults.[P] Under the flooring of most of the halls have been found drains, running along the centre, then bending off towards a conduit in one of the corners, which carried the contents down into one of the principal channels.

25.—SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR TILES). KHORSABAD.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, of little avail, so that it was frequently a simpler and less expensive proceeding for a king to build a new palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under the workmen's hands. It is not astonishing that sometimes, when they had to give up an old mansion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in order to carry away the stone and use it in structures of their own, probably not so much as a matter of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work, stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the river always being a lengthy operation. This explains why, in some later palaces, slabs were found with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick wall, and the other smoothed and prepared for the artist, or with the sculptures half erased, or piled up against the wall, ready to be put in place. The nature of the injuries which caused the ancient buildings to decay and lose all shape, is very faithfully described in an inscription of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of an ancient construction, which he repaired, as far as it went. This is what he says: "The temple of the Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a former king had built ... but had not finished its upper part, from remote days had fallen into decay. The channels for drawing off the water had not been properly provided; rain and tempest had washed away its bricks; the bricks of the roof were cracked; the bricks of the building were washed away into heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently accounts for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian ruins. Whatever process of destruction the buildings underwent, whether natural or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged, dried up or soaked through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they crumbled, the surplus rolling down the sides and forming those even slopes which, from a distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills. Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.

26.—WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian kings allude in their annals by the continually recurring phrase: "I destroyed their cities, I overwhelmed them, I burned them in the fire, I made heaps of them." However difficult it is to get at the treasures imbedded in these "heaps," we ought not to repine at the labor, since they owe their preservation entirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose rubbish which have protected them on all sides from the contact with air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keeping them as safely—if not as transparently—housed as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The explorers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, after completing their work for the time, they make it a point to fill all the excavated spaces with the very rubbish that has been taken out of them at the cost of so much labor and time. There is something impressive and reverent in thus re-burying the relics of those dead ages and nations, whom the mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs becomes better than the glare of the broad, curious daylight. When Layard, before his departure, after once more wandering with some friends through all the trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud mound, to gaze for the last time on the wonders on which no man had looked before him, found himself once more on the naked platform and ordered the workmen to cover them up again, he was strongly moved by the contrast: "We look around in vain," says he, "for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been listening to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who may hereafter tread on the spot when the grass again grows over the Assyrian palaces, may indeed suspect that I have been relating a vision."

27.—WINGED BULL.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of their dwellings—nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries; indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange, therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury. The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never seriously discussed. The question is simply left open, until something happens to shed light on it.

28.—MAN-LION.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of Chaldea,—perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews—was regarded as a place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins are, like merchandise, unladen for the night—and sometimes for days too—in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it is easy to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth of which leave their bones in the desert in healthy seasons. However that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties. Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.

29.—FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

22. Among the Chaldeans cities Erech (now Warka) was considered from very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus, in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations, and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around. No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyæna appear to shun the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human remains which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial, among which the following four are the most remarkable.

30.—RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER.

(British Museum.)

31.—EBONY COMB.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

32.—BRONZE FORK AND SPOON.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two earthen jars (a and b), which accurately fit together, or one slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a coating of bitumen (d, d). The body can be placed in such a coffin only with slightly bent knees. At one end (c) there is an air-hole, left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of the body and which might otherwise burst the jars—a precaution probably suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all, yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.

33.—ARMENIAN LOUVRE.

(Botta.)

24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape and arrangement.[Q] In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found, showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all of one piece—a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind of coffins.

34.—VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

35.—VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's height.[R] In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skeleton is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left hand. Around are placed various articles—dishes, in some of which remnants of food are found, such as date stones,—jars for water, lamps, etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than eleven. (Fig. [39], p. 89.)

36.—CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN.

(Taylor.)

26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a different and foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of "slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand. There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper, without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.

37.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR.

(Taylor.)

38.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB.

(Taylor.)

27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and preservation. (Fig. [41], p. 90.)

39.—SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR.

(Taylor.)

40.—STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.)

(Hommel.)

28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach such perfection as the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, on account of not having stone either at home or within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater variety of architectural ornaments from that inexhaustible material of theirs—baked clay or terra-cotta. We see an instance of it in remnants—unfortunately very small ones, of some walls belonging to that same city of Erech. On one of the mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large quantity of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, lying about on the ground. The thick flat end of them was painted red, black or white. What was his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall (some seven feet in height and not more than thirty in length), which showed him what their use had been. They were grouped into a variety of patterns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with their thin end into a layer of soft clay with which it was coated for the purpose. Still more original and even rather incomprehensible is a wall decoration consisting of several bands, composed each of three rows of small pots or cups—about four inches in diameter—stuck into the soft clay coating in the same manner, with the mouth turned outward of course! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately has given no design of it. (Figures [43] and [44].)

41.—DRAIN IN MOUND.

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture, the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881), what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra, bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S] Unfortunately they are all headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was found separate,—a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T] These large prizes were accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years' indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now called Tell-Loh, and supposed to be the site of Sir-burla, or Sir-gulla, one of the most ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place them at about 4500 b.c., others about 4000. However overwhelming such a valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000 b.c. It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all their bearings.

42.—WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA (ERECH).

(Loftus.)

43.—TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE.

(Loftus.)